Chapter 18
“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” Trap asked as she poured the lemonade she’d just made into a travel-ready container.
“No, it’s fine,” she said, looking over to him. “When the food gets here, we’ll go.”
Trap took in the picnic basket she’d pulled out of one of the cupboards he’d built into her stairs. It looked brand new, and she’d opened it to check for a tablecloth, plates, utensils, and cups. Then she’d started putting together a few “extras” she wanted to take with them.
“We really can just eat out of the boxes,” he said.
He’d bought two pizzas and two orders of pasta, one spaghetti and meatballs and one fettuccine Alfredo with chicken, and he figured they could each have some of everything.
“Pizza comes in a box, sweetheart.”
Lila Mae looked at him, her eyes wide. “So…what? We’re going to drive out there, sit down on the ground, and eat off our laps?”
Trap grinned at her. “Yeah, sounds like a good Texas time.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
He moved into the kitchen and hooked his arm around her waist. “Are you going to change your clothes?”
She gave him a glare. “No. Why should I change my clothes?”
“Because we’re going out to the southern end of your ranch,” he said. “Somewhere that a human hasn’t set foot in at least three weeks, and we’re going to sit down on the ground, and eat out of our laps.”
“We’re going to drive, right?”
“Yes, honey, but….” Trap cut off because he wasn’t quite sure how to explain the Texas wilderness to Lila Mae. She’d lived here for a couple of months, but that didn’t mean she understood how rugged Texas could be. “What’s out at the river?”
She tightened the lid on the thermos and set it in the picnic basket before facing him fully. “The river?”
Trap settled his weight on one foot. “Do you have a picnic table out there?”
“I have plans for one,” she said.
“So you’re going to spread a blanket on the ground?”
“Oh, a blanket.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s a good idea.” She moved over to the couch where he’d spent the night when he’d had heat stroke a couple of weeks ago and started to unfold it.
“You’re getting the blanket from the bed?”
“Yes,” she said. “I live in a tiny house, Trap. How much storage do you think I have?”
“It’ll get dirty,” he said.
“That’s fine. I’ve got a washing machine here.”
“I still can’t believe you didn’t want a stackable unit,” he said.
“I thought it took up too much room, and it eliminates the counter space in that corner.”
Trap turned to look in the corner of the kitchen where she had her washing machine. Yes, a stackable unit with a dryer on top would eliminate the butcher block he’d put over it. He could see her point.
“You could bring it to my place,” he said. “I can wash it and dry it.”
“It’ll be fine.” She wore a cute-as-heck sundress with wide straps that went up over her shoulders, and Trap figured he might as well enjoy it if she wasn’t going to change. Still, he should be responsible too.
“Are you going to bring sunscreen?” he asked.
“The sun will be down soon,” she said. “There are trees out there besides.”
He nodded again, because he wasn’t Lila Mae’s father, and he didn’t want to question every decision she made.
Her phone chimed, and she glanced at it. “That’s the Two Cents app. I bet the food is almost here.”
She finished pulling the blanket off the bed, and Trap moved over to take it from her to fold it. She put the bed away and closed the picnic basket just before someone knocked on her door. She took the two steps to open it, her smile wide as she thanked the man for bringing their pizza and pasta.
This delivery driver left without a conversation, and Lila Mae grinned at Trap and said, “Let’s go load up.”
He couldn’t help smiling at her too, strappy sandals and sunscreen-less and all. While his exhaustion had run deep this week, he felt re-energized by spending some alone-time with Lila Mae out by the river.
He wondered if it would have much water in it, because the heat had been brutal. Trap supposed he’d seen water in the river in town, though this was the western branch of the river when it split before it came through Three Rivers, and he really didn’t have much experience with it.
He finished folding the blanket, picked up the picnic basket, and followed Lila Mae outside to her UTV. He put the picnic basket in the back next to the boxes and containers of pizza, and then he put the blanket on the backseat.
“You want me to drive?” he asked.
“Sure,” Lila Mae said, and they performed a little dance as they moved around each other so he could go to the driver’s side. She got in beside him and slid all the way over on the seat, so she sat in the middle with the length of her thigh pressed against his.
The key still sat in the ignition, and Trap turned it to start the motor. He backed away from Lila Mae’s house and got them on the road leading south toward the Intake Center, and then the community center shed he was currently working on, and then the hospital that he had already passed to Ruby.
He, Jason, and Sawyer had already worked on all the roads and infrastructure here at the ranch, and he knew he could get all the way to the river if he stayed on this road.
Lila Mae’s ranch was eight hundred acres, with the river probably three or four miles back.
He made the drive in about fifteen minutes, the wind pulling at her hair, which she’d let down and loose over her shoulders, and kept gathering into the palm of her hand to keep it from whipping her in the face.
The road ran right along the western edge of her property and the fence, and Trap noticed that it probably needed some work, though she wasn’t planning on keeping cattle out here.
Trees bordered the river on both sides and made a natural fence for the southern part of her property.
He pulled past one giant cottonwood, and between elms and junipers, and came to a stop before the land started to slope down into the riverbed.
He cut the engine. “It looks like it’s pretty low.”
He got out and turned back to Lila Mae, who scooted out his side of the UTV. “Was that tree down last time you were here?” he asked, nodding to the big slippery elm which now spanned the width of the river.
“I don’t think so,” Lila Mae said. She looked around like she’d never been here before. “I honestly can’t remember.”
Trap nodded and scanned the area. With dusk almost here, he’d need to pay attention and not lose his head just because he was with Lila Mae.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Animals.” He looked at her. “No one has lived here, sweetheart, for fifteen years, and you don’t come down here very often. Do you know what kind of animals we have in the Texas Panhandle?”
A cute frown appeared between her eyes. “No, sir.”
“Well, there are a lot of things,” he said. “Pronghorns, jackrabbits, burrowing owls, mule deer, bison. And then, of course, you’ve got the more predator-type animals: coyotes, bobcats, foxes, mountain lions.”
Lila Mae looked at him with alarm. “Mountain lions?”
He nodded across the river. “I see some holes over there. Those are probably prairie dog dens or ground squirrels. There’ll be mice and voles, all kinds of stuff out here.
This is where hawks and eagles and owls look for prey.
” He moved to the back of the UTV and picked up the picnic basket.
“We’ll be fine. We just have to pay attention. ”
Trap scanned the landscape through the trees. “Can you grab the food and the blanket?”
“Yes,” Lila Mae said, and she hopped into action.
The blanket was ridiculous, but Trap didn’t say anything. The ground out here was forested because of the trees, and so dirty and filled with foliage debris, leaves, and twigs and branches that had fallen down. It looked wild because it was.
Trap walked for a minute or two, and finally found an old log that had fallen parallel to the river. “We can just sit here,” he called over his shoulder, and he put the picnic basket on the ground and sat beside it on the log.
Lila Mae picked her way through the area in her strappy silver sandals, with the blanket tucked under her arm and her hand gripping her skirt to hold it up higher, the pizza boxes and plastic containers balanced in one arm.
Trap launched himself right back to his feet and headed over to Lila Mae. “While I love those shoes, I should’ve insisted you change.” He took the blanket from under her arm and waited for her to pause so he could take the food.
She looked up at him. “Maybe I should have. I didn’t realize it was going to be quite so forested. The Panhandle is usually plains.”
“This is a river, sweetheart,” he said. “Things grow around it.” He couldn’t stop his smile.
“Just step where I step.” He turned around and picked his way back over to the log he’d chosen as their dinner bench, Lila Mae’s footsteps crunching behind him over the gravel and sticks and dirt. “Sit right there, baby.”
She sat where he’d been, and he went around the picnic basket, his left foot slipping as he stepped right on the edge of the slope and the ground gave way. He grunted and caught himself quickly, stutter-stepping back up to the flat ground.
“You want the blanket?” He looked at her, and she seemed so far out of her element, what with her slightly wavy hair and that pretty sundress, and the way she turned her aqua eyes on him.
“No,” she said. “I can see you were right. We don’t need it.”
No, they sure didn’t, as this was not an improved riverside picnic area. It was wild land with trees and foliage and animals that had been doing whatever they wanted for the past fifteen years.
“I’ll take it back to the UTV,” he said. “Go ahead and start eating.” He went around the back of the log this time so he wouldn’t slip down the ten feet into the river.
He put the blanket back on the backseat of the UTV and turned around and took a deep breath.
This really was gorgeous country, touched by the hand of God Himself, and Trap loved the Texas Panhandle.
He loved that it was plain grasses beyond the trees on the other side of the river, and here on Lila Mae’s ranch.
He loved that he could hear the call of birds in the trees and the rustling of the breeze through the leaves, and that when the wind died, the world turned utterly and completely silent.
Trap closed his eyes, just listening to nothing, as peace and comfort and calmness spread through him.
A keen sense of gratitude moved through him that the Lord had placed him in this place, where he could feel close to God and close to nature, and like his soul had worth beyond even what Trap could comprehend.
Rustling sounded in the grass, and Trap’s eyes flew open, because that sound could only come from an animal. He saw nothing, though he knew there were any number of animals living underground here.
With his soul satisfied, but his stomach growling for dinner, he turned to head back toward Lila Mae. The calm silence was shattered by her scream, and Trap’s pulse got sent into a complete tizzy. He couldn’t see through the low branches of the cottonwoods, but he started to run.
“Lila Mae!” he called.
“Trap!” she screamed.
The sound of her crying filled the air, and Trap’s whole body tensed as he continued through the forest.
“What is it?” he asked, panting as he arrived at her side.
She stood, and she clutched a pizza box in front of her as tears streamed down her face. She looked north, and Trap quickly scanned the area in front of them.
He didn’t see the badger until it hissed, all of its teeth bared. Then he zeroed in on it, realizing that it had already flattened itself to the ground and looked ready to attack.